How to remember every day of your life

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Capturing a life, one second at a time

Story highlights

Cesar Kuriyama has filmed everyday of his life for one year for his "1 Second Everyday" project

He says the project has helped him live in a manner he won't regret when looking back at the finished video

There is a mobile application in development that will help people create similar projects

Ever wish that you remembered every day of your life? Cesar Kuriyama did.

So starting more than a year and a half ago, Kuriyama has recorded video every single day to help him remember. Kuriyama has compiled this footage into a piece he calls "1 Second Everyday -- Age 30."

Using only one second of footage from each day, the video shows a variety of snippets and experiences from the Brooklyn-based artist's life. These scenes range from the mundane, such as browsing Facebook and watching TV, to the adventurous, including a cross-country trip that Kuriyama took after he saved up enough money to take a year off from work.

Kuriyama sat down with CNN at TED 2012 in Long Beach, California, to talk about his project.

CNN: Why did you take a year off from work?

Kuriyama: Frankly I was burnt out. I'd been constantly working nights until midnight, until 2 in the morning, weekends and I wasn't getting my creative juices off so I needed to take some time off and after having seen Stefan Sagmeister's talk on "The power of time off," I decided to save up enough money over the course of about two years and took a year off so that I could travel, spend more time with my family and pursue my own creative ideas such as the one second everyday project.

CNN: Can you talk about the project?

Kuriyama: The one-second everyday project was something that originally started out as a way for me to chronicle my year off from work but really quickly after I started I realized that it was helping me in many more ways. It was allowing me to realize that I could remember everyday that I've lived; it was allowing me to quickly reflect back on the things that I had to done, to be able to zoom out from the past month and realize, "Oh wow, I sat around a lot this month." I instantly decided to do it for the rest of my life and realized the benefits were far greater than the amount of work I needed to put into it, which was just a quick second to remind me of that day.

CNN: What's your biggest takeaway from doing this project?

Kuriyama: It's a very powerful project for me. I really do think that putting something together like this for your own personal life, not necessarily to show other people what your life is like but so you yourself can remember what you've done over the years, could be very beneficial to anyone.

CNN: Are there any seconds you would wish you could take back or do differently looking back at those days, at those frames?

Kuriyama: The two seconds that I forgot that were black that just said, "Whoops I forgot." I learned from those mistakes, those two mistakes are painful to see on screen but those two mistakes basically led to me never forgetting to do this ever again because I can remember how I felt in this moment and that's what this project is about. This project is about looking back on the days where I made a mistake or I did something wrong or I feel regret and learning from them and I found that without a project like this that I'll not learn from mistakes because I'll so easily forget them.

Kuriyama is currently working on a mobile app that will allow others to easily compile their own one-second everyday project. More information can be found here.